R.I.P., Margaret Thatcher

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the first and only woman British prime minister, has died at the age of 87 from stroke. The Iron Lady served as prime minister from 1979 to 1990. After a stroke in 2002, she had retired from public life.

In a statement, British Prime Minister David Cameron said “We have lost a great leader, a great prime minister and a great Briton.”

Lady Thatcher was the first woman to become prime minister of Britain and the first to lead a major Western power in modern times. Hard driving and hardheaded, she led her Conservative Party to three straight election victories and held office for 11½ years — May 1979 to November 1990 — longer than any British politician in the 20th century.

The tough economic medicine she administered to a country sickened by inflation, budget deficits and industrial unrest brought her wide swings in popularity, culminating with a revolt among her own cabinet ministers in her final year and her shout of “No! No! No!’’ in the House of Commons to any further integration with Europe.

Even Lady Thatcher’s critics admitted that some of her economic reforms were needed. She came to power after the 1978-79 Winter of Discontent, a wave of strikes which left rubbish piling up in the streets and the dead unburied in some areas. She imposed spending cuts as well as labour market reforms, taking on critics dubbed “the wets”, the moderate Tory ministers she sacked from her own Cabinet. In 1981, she declared that: “The lady’s not for turning,” a phrase that may prove her epitaph and has made the party leaders who followed her reluctant to make U-turns on policy.

Lady Thatcher, known as “Maggie,” won popular backing way beyond the Conservatives’ natural supporters. Even doubters acknowledged she showed strong leadership. But she was also seen as a leader who divided the nation because of the harsh measures she took on the economy. Critics blamed her for writing off huge sections of Britain’s manufacturing industry and allowing unemployment to rise to three million.

On the world stage, she collaborated closely with her friend Ronald Reagan to modernize Europe’s anti-Soviet nuclear shield by deploying cruise and Pershing II missiles in Britain, a costly and controversial enterprise that some analysts would later say contributed to the breakup of the Soviet Union. Mrs. Thatcher then joined Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, in repelling Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, counseling Bush not to go “wobbly” on her.

She fought her own war as well, dispatching an armada to retake by force a colonial outpost off South America — the Falkland Islands — after it was invaded by Argentina in 1982. At the same time, she negotiated the end of Britain’s lease over another colonial relic, Hong Kong.

Even Lady Thatcher’s critics admitted that some of her economic reforms were needed. She came to power after the 1978-79 Winter of Discontent, a wave of strikes which left rubbish piling up in the streets and the dead unburied in some areas. She imposed spending cuts as well as labour market reforms, taking on critics dubbed “the wets”, the moderate Tory ministers she sacked from her own Cabinet. In 1981, she declared that: “The lady’s not for turning,” a phrase that may prove her epitaph and has made the party leaders who followed her reluctant to make U-turns on policy.

Lady Thatcher, known as “Maggie,” won popular backing way beyond the Conservatives’ natural supporters. Even doubters acknowledged she showed strong leadership. But she was also seen as a leader who divided the nation because of the harsh measures she took on the economy. Critics blamed her for writing off huge sections of Britain’s manufacturing industry and allowing unemployment to rise to three million.